Author: DOuG pRATt

Made for Each Other

“Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court” is scary enough without Frontline’s ominous music bed.

What Clarence and Ginni have in common is anger and resentment. Having failed to resolve their lifelong internal conflicts, they cling to the certainty of an intolerant faith that is anything but Christian in its outlook. They’ll take everything they can get while hating the world and everyone in it including, it seems, themselves.

The Hearst Follies – 2

As Howard Hughes would do later, William Randolph Hearst bought his way into the movie business. One of Hearst’s productions was Gabriel Over the White House. Walter Huston, who played a bank president in American Madness before the election of FDR, is promoted by Hearst to dictatorial President.

While watching Gabriel Over the White House, I wished that eye-catching Jean Parker had been given more screen time, as the daughter of a labor leader.

Part 3 will be about the woman who caught Hearst’s eye years before Gabriel, his mistress and protégé, Marion Davies.

The Hearst Follies – 1

April 8, 1911, Winsor McCay, “The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald,” released Little Nemo, a groundbreaking work of animation based on his Sunday comic strip.

Just three months later, on July 23, 1911, McCay left the New York Herald to work for William Randolph Hearst. Little Nemo, renamed In the Land of Wonderful Dreams, reappeared on September 3 in Hearst’s New York American.

We are living in the final few years of printed newspapers. Hearst was a towering figure in the business, whose influence helped to make the American comic strip an important creative and commercial medium. Comic strips led, of course, to the creation of comic books.

Don’t delay in watching this 2-part American Experience documentary. The videos are supposed to expire on May 31.